The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has called on the Federal Government to work closer with tech vendors to fight rising rates of cyber crime.
The ICT lobby group made its comments in a submission to the House of Representatives’ standing committee on communications’ inquiry into cyber crime.
In a statement, ACS president, Kumar Parakala, said recent high-profile cyber attacks on banking and government websites were only the beginning of a rise in online crime.
“An increase in cyber crime is the unfortunate by-product of high speed, always on, Internet services. It is also a major impediment to our further growth in this area,” he said in the statement.
Parakala cited examples of sophisticated phishing attacks against the Australian Taxaxtion Office (ATO) as reasons why users would consider moving away from using service online, but said it would be “an enormous backwards step”.
“Research has shown that security is the primary barrier for SMEs moving to online business models. The current security frameworks are not proving effective in meeting current and emerging security threats,” he said.
While the ACS supported the Federal Government’s increasing consideration of security issues and its establishment of a Cyber Security Operations Centre, it said that more needs to be done.
